Phpmyadmin: why? Why? WHY?

Okay, so sometimes I tend to not "get" the use of some pieces of software. I admit it. That's just me.

But really, what in the holy hell is the purpose of phpmyadmin? As far as I can tell, its only functions are:

1) Teaching people how to uninstall software from a webserver

2) Malware

Seriously, this thing is 16 years old, and I still get nigh-WEEKLY notices about it on the security mailing lists. And those notices are for shit like SQL injections and XSS attacks. Grade-one level stupid shit!

The only thing I can think of is that the project was actually abandoned years ago, but a bunch of malware writers took it over. They make sure it stays basically functional, and even extend its functionality, to maintain and even grow the install base. And then they make sure there's a constant stream of "OMGWTF" code that goes into it so there are constant new and undiscovered security holes for them to exploit.

In fact, that has to be it. That's the ONLY reason I can think of that a 16 year old, mature, major project can have this many utterly basic security holes in it.

Good or bad, I'm still absolutely baffled as to who still uses this thing anymore, and why. It's slow, buggy, near useless and is pretty much 100% guarenteed to expose your site to being hacked.

It provides a"GUI" so that people like Blakey who don't understand databases can pretend they can mess around with them without having to go near a command line interface and think he might be using Linux?

I use HeidiSQL for MySQL access. It took a while for me to convince the others to use that instead of phpMyAdmin for our MySQL server, but I'm really the only security-conscious one here. There is no reason whatsoever to set up a website on a public-facing server to give direct database access when you always work on the same network as the server and there are non-public-facing options.

Some of my servers run honeypots and most attempts are phpmyadmin sniffs.

I meant the MySQL desktop software query tool thing is only a small turd instead of a large turd, and has crossed that oh-so-important gap between "complete garbage" and "barely usable". Which makes PHPMyAdmin useless now. I was just saying, "there's no point to this tool," but using literary devices that obviously people here didn't understand because I momentarily forgot everybody here is a moron. Sorry.

You have to keep careful track of how turd-y a particular piece of software is.

It provides a"GUI" so that people like Blakey who don't understand databases can pretend they can mess around with them without having to go near a command line interface and think he might be using Linux?

When I read that I had some sort of weird Deja Vu flashback, as if we've had this same exact discusion about phpmyadmin before.